God morally responsible?

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I have free will, so I am responsible for my own decisions.
 
I’m doing a debate arguing that God is not morally responsible for his actions. These are some objections I think I may have to deal with:

Is God morally responsible for His actions? If someone is morally responsible, his actions are blame worthy or praise worthy. We praise God for what He does. Does that make him morally responsible? Does God have free will? If he has free will, doesn’t that mean that God could have done otherwise? Could God have chosen evil? What about our free will? If God gives us free will and temptations, and our freedom to discern temptations is good, isn’t this good for God to have? If God possesses all perfections, isn’t not being responsible an imperfection?

Feel free to go in depth. The more objections and responses, the better for me.
 
If God is GOD, then who is He responsible to?

If God is GOD, then He is the definition of “morality”…

This question seems like it assumes God isn’t GOD… :confused:
 
Of course God has free will, He does whatever He wants. He does not have to answer to anyone. He does not choose evil because that is not in His nature.

Besides, what we think of as evil does not apply to God. We do not know what His plans are and we do not know why He may do as He does or allow what He allows.

It is not our place to question or judge any of His decisions. All we need to know is that His will is the proper one and whatever He does will always be for the greater good.

An interesting book on how God thinks is the dialogue of St. Cathering of Siena. It is fairly complex and fairly tough to read, but gives some insight into what God expects of us.
 
The question is moot. God defines morality. Thus God is above morality. However, since He defines it, and He is perfectly consistent and infallible, it is a logicaly absurdity that He can violate His own moral law and there be “morally responsible”.

That God is unchangable (immutable) means that His pronouncements, including His Morality, are unchangeable. That He is infallible and and perfectly consistent means there is no deviation in His behavior. That he is omniscient (all-knowing) and is outside of time, alllows Him to know all the consequences and results as well as all** potential **consequences and results of every action **and potential action **by every being capable of free-will.

Thus, as I stated at the beginning, the questions is both moot and logically absurd.
 
Maybe the question could be looked at based on these two concepts:

  1. *]Should we expect God to follow the same rules we are expected to follow? If God has defined morality for us and we are responsible to God for following the definition, isn’t God somewhat responsible to us for following the same rules? If not, why make the rules for us minor beings when the infinitely more powerful being can potentially cause infinitely more suffering by not following the rules than any of us can?
    *]Do we only follow “our” God because we have no choice? We would not follow anyone on earth who violated their own moral code in the ways the God of the bible has.
    I contend that the God presented in the bible has at the least appeared to be morally irresponsible from our point of view. I understand the previous statements that God can do anything God wants and that we don’t have to understand it but I’m not sure that is being truly responsible.

    A few examples:

    God wants the Jews freed from Egypt. Is it moral to starve or drown or send plagues to innocent people to achieve this? Is it OK to kill the innocent first born children when there were certainly other more moral things an omnipotent God could come up with?

    God orders a man to slaughter his son to prove his loyalty and then says never mind - would a moral being consider this to be a fine thing to do?

    This diety then requires the barbaric torture and human sacrifice of his own perfect and innocent son to see fit to forgive some mythological offense. Somehow the shedding of the blood of someone who never sinned is justifiable and pays the price of sin? Is this something a moral being is supposed to accept as OK?

    Saying that God can do anything and that we just don’t understand is also saying that for God, the end justifies the means.
 
Hello Junostarlighter,

Free will means freedom from the will of God. An animal is free to choose which direction it runs but an animal has no freedom from the will of God. Animals, trees, rocks, insects cannot disobey the will of God and therefore have no free will. Everything in the universe, outside of free willed man, is exactly as God commands it to be. In the physical realm, only free-willed man can oppose the will of God.

Can God disobey the Word of God?

Well we know that the Father went through tremedous pain to grant man an avenue into heaven without God disobeying the Word of God. Wether or not the Father has the ability to oppose the will/Word of God is debateable. (Jesus, the Son of God, as man, did have human free-will Jesus Loves God ). What we do know is that the Father allowed His Son to die for our sins rather than contradict the Word of God.

God’s Word told man that if he ate from the tree of knowledge (sinned) he would certianly die. Man did choose to sin. God’s Word condemns man to hell. With tremendous pain to the Father, the Father allows Jesus, His only Son, to die in our place for our sins. With our sins wiped clean by Jesus our Saviour, we can go to heaven with out God’s Word being comprimized.

With God allowing the crucifixion of His Son, rather than God comprimizing the Word of God, I think we can safely say that God, free or not free to disobey the Word of God, is responsible to His Word.
 
God’s will is the basis of what morallity is from my perspective. Rebelling against that will is what sin is. I think that the desire to questioning God’s morallity comes from our fallen nature, our limited perspective, and lies from the evil one to try and turn us against God.

So I don’t think it is a valid question. It brings God down to the level of a creature. God is morallity, he is perfect love and the source of everything that is good. We can trust in him completely and only by becoming a slave to his will can we be truly free by escaping the bondage of sin. Sin is bondage precisely because it leads to serving another master besides God.
 
patg said:
Maybe the question could be looked at based on these two concepts:

  1. *]Should we expect God to follow the same rules we are expected to follow? If God has defined morality for us and we are responsible to God for following the definition, isn’t God somewhat responsible to us for following the same rules? If not, why make the rules for us minor beings when the infinitely more powerful being can potentially cause infinitely more suffering by not following the rules than any of us can?
    *]Do we only follow “our” God because we have no choice? We would not follow anyone on earth who violated their own moral code in the ways the God of the bible has.
    I contend that the God presented in the bible has at the least appeared to be morally irresponsible from our point of view. I understand the previous statements that God can do anything God wants and that we don’t have to understand it but I’m not sure that is being truly responsible.

    A few examples:

    God wants the Jews freed from Egypt. Is it moral to starve or drown or send plagues to innocent people to achieve this? Is it OK to kill the innocent first born children when there were certainly other more moral things an omnipotent God could come up with?

    God orders a man to slaughter his son to prove his loyalty and then says never mind - would a moral being consider this to be a fine thing to do?

    This diety then requires the barbaric torture and human sacrifice of his own perfect and innocent son to see fit to forgive some mythological offense. Somehow the shedding of the blood of someone who never sinned is justifiable and pays the price of sin? Is this something a moral being is supposed to accept as OK?

    Saying that God can do anything and that we just don’t understand is also saying that for God, the end justifies the means.
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  1. This is a very disturbing theology. You need to cite some sources if you are going to state that God has done evil.
 
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